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Privacy In BitTorrent By Hiding In the Crowd

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the even-kids-can-still-find-waldo dept.

pinguin-geek writes "Researchers at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University have identified a new 'guilt-by-association' threat to privacy in peer-to-peer (P2P) systems that would enable an eavesdropper to accurately classify groups of users with similar download behavior. While many have pointed out that the data exchanged over these connections can reveal personal information about users, the researchers shows that only the patterns of connections — not the data itself — is sufficient to create a powerful threat to user privacy. To thwart this threat, they have released SwarmScreen, a publicly available, open source software that restores privacy by masking a user's real download activity in such a manner as to disrupt classification."

4 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. Here's an idea... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    ...How's about redirecting all that effort into, oh, I don't know, NOT FUCKING STEALING THE MUSIC. At what point did it become OK to steal shit because we think the price is too high? If you don't like the price, don't fucking buy it or just listen to the radio like we did as kids. There *IS* no justification for stealing. None.

  2. Here's a novel idea: Don't FUCKING STEAL !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Stop stealing and you won't worry about this shit

    1. Re:Here's a novel idea: Don't FUCKING STEAL !! by CarpetShark · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Stop stealing and you won't worry about this shit

      You're stealing everyone's time and bandwidth, posting uninformed crap like that.

  3. Re:only works with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Transmission, for those of us who have a spare linux/os x box.

    How does bittrorrent.com like DRM? This is the first I've heard of it, please explain.

    Vuze is the only bittorrent client I've used that actively crashed my PC. Why would a bittorrent client cause me to blue screen around four times in a row? I don't like the fact, as well, that its actual useful features (you know, as a bittorrent client) are somewhat hidden, and requires some clicks to actually view the information that you want to see, like what your downloading, and how fast. While I'm sure a segment of the population find its hideous UI, and spammy adverts for craptastic pop music useful, I find them a distraction from what I really want to do, download torrents. Also I've noticed it is on the whole slower than uTorrent and Transmission (actually transmission, in my experience is much faster than utorrent with like settings on the same network, for some reason).

    If someone could recommend a good FOSS torrent client for Windows, I'd hop on it in a second. Vuze, though, doesn't satisfy the first requirement.

    maybe because you are using M$ Windoze?
    Get a real OS before complaining.
    Asshole.